Poetry In Motion

With Apple announcing that the iPad will be available in the US from Saturday 3rd April. Landing in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland sometime late April. Now's probably a good time to take a look at how some of the US's biggest magazines, are going to tackle the question of how do you serve magazine content on it.

Furthest down the development line, showing us exactly what’s in store, is VIV Mag. With this video demonstration, showcasing a behind the scenes look at what went in to creating their very first, up and running, interactive magazine for the iPad.

VIV Mag



Below, you’ll also see the cover and a feature spread.



And the VIV Mag iPad front cover.



Wired

Next up is Wired Magazine. While less elaborate but no less inventive, is their vision for the future: Digital Story Art. And allowing that to happen is of course, the iPad, showcasing the experience WIRED will be delivering to their readers in April, they released their demonstration at TED a few weeks ago.

The WIRED Magazine’s iPad experience is very rich, and believe it or not, is developed in Adobe AIR (even if flash is banned!) which is said to be the technology behind the iPad’s rich text, imagery, interactivity, animation and dynamics.

There are lots of great little interface and experience features of the WIRED iPad Experience, but I think the seamless use of the 360 degree product views, dual axis navigation, favourite bin (very handy) and standard social integration are the standouts in this first glimpse.

However, the thing that a lot of you will be interested in is how advertising is represented. About three minuets into the video they showcase an interactive ad for Teslsa Motors, it’s a nice clean ad but didn’t seem to create the expanded interactive experience I thought an iPad Ad would deliver. But I’m sure it’s just the very start of what’s to come.



Sports Illustrated

And with Sports Illustrated going the same way as the aforementioned. It just serves to reaffirm and demonstrate that the future of magazine publishing very probably lies in incorporating video clips, interactivity, branded content, games, content sharing and rich, interactive advertising possibilities. But it has to be noted, all this looks and sounds an awful lot like the websites of today.